How big can a small town get before it can no longer be considered a small town?
That question, for which there’s no definitive answer, was rattling around my brain late last week after attending the town update hosted by Mayor Tanya Thorn at the Okotoks Art Gallery.
Not surprisingly, water and development were front and centre at the annual session as it would have been darn near impossible to hold a town hall and not have both come up. Mind you, I don’t believe the word ‘deer’ was uttered even one time, which likely set some kind of Okotoks record.
The mayor told the crowd that Okotoks has been one of the slowest growing places around over the past few years, a claim that is backed up by the numbers, but one that might not necessarily pass the eye test given all the infrastructure work going on to set the table for much greater growth.
The question, one that will be asked repeatedly this year, is how much of that growth should take place at any one time, with the worry being that too much development will ruin our small-town charm.
Given Okotoks could have become a city about 20,000 people ago, the fact it remains a ‘town’ is more semantic than anything else. As the mayor has rightly said in the past, it’s not the number of people, but how those people behave, how they treat each other, that determines whether that small-town feeling can be maintained.
I think the challenge the mayor issued at last week’s session, one aimed at every household in town, speaks to that mindset of looking after your neighbours, including the commercial ones. She urged each household to shift $500 in annual spending — and she was adamant about shifting spending, not increasing it — from what’s currently expended beyond our borders to local businesses, a move that would pour more than $5 million into the Okotoks economy.
Consciously thinking about the business community, whose services, taxes and support allow this town to thrive, is what a small-town attitude is all about. Being a good neighbour comes in many forms, and it’s when many people make the effort to do so that a town truly flourishes, regardless of its population.
When it comes to growth, the bottom line is that if it doesn’t happen within town boundaries, it will do so on its edges, meaning Okotoks will feel the impacts of that added population but the tax money flowing from it would go elsewhere. What’s more, it means the scope and pace of that development would also be outside the Town’s jurisdiction so it could happen at a rate that’s considered undesirable.
For those reasons, Okotoks has no choice but to embrace growth, although it can do so on its own terms by determining the rate at which it will happen. When that inevitable development takes place, will we reach a point where Okotoks is no longer a small town, presuming it can still be considered one today?
Or will a population figure prove immaterial if we continue to act like we live in a small town?
